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The San Francisco based Dodos are best known for their beautiful and catchy indie rock that is usually based around an acoustic guitar. However, at Hopscotch the band put aside their acoustic instrumentation and put on one of the better rock n roll shows I have seen in a while. The songs off of their newest album No Color sounded great on the big speakers in city plaza and new songs found new life with the more “rocking” instrumentation.

Guided By Voices (City Plaza)

Right after Guided By Voices’ headlining set in City Plaza a friend pointed out that the band is pretty much a bar band. While it is easy to see how one could think that, fans of the band realized that they were seeing one of the most prolific songwriters of the 90’s perform his classic songs, possibly for the last time. Whether or not the band’s set ends up being the bands last, it was clear that they were playing like it was. Guided By Voices packed in songs like Gold Star For Robot Boy, Game Of Pricks and many other fan favorites into their all too brief set.

Swans (Fletcher Opera Hall)

It’s hard to hold a large crowd’s attention at a festival when there are ten other bands playing in other venues at the same time. For two hours the legendary genre-expanding band did just that. After opening with a 30-minute version of track No Words/No Thoughts the band filled the Fletcher Opera Hall with their abrasive yet beautiful songs. Continue reading →

The local favorites played a blistering set that consisted of songs off of both of their albums, as well as a few new songs. The band had much of the crowd dancing and singing along for most of the set. Highlights of the set included a horn section joining the band for Wilmont and a fantastic cover of Diana Ross’ My World Is Empty Without You.

Black Lips (Lincoln Theater)

Atlanta based garage rockers the Black Lips are known for their rowdy shows and this one was no different. Throughout the set the band fought with security, made out with each other and even played baseball with cans of beer and their guitars. With many bands these kinds of shenanigans would keep the bands from putting on a show that was musically sound. However, The Black Lips were able to act up a bit while still ripping through songs from their newest album Arabia Mountain as well as older fan favorites like Bad Kids and O Katrina.

Check out reviews of Lower Dens, Dinosaur Feathers and Spider Bags after the jump.

The Hopscotch Music Festival has announced the lineup for this year’s festival and its a doozy. The festival, which takes place september 8-10 in downtown Raleigh will be headlined by psychedelic rockers The Flaming Lips and newly reunited indie rock pioneers Guided By Voices. Other bands that will perform on the festival’s main stage include The Dodos, Drive By Truckers and local heroes Superchunk. In addition to the main stage, acts will perform in 11 other venues scattered around downtown Raleigh including King’s Barcade, The Pour House, Tir Na Nog and the Flether Opera Theater. Acts that will perform in these venues include Dinosaur Jr frontman J Mascis, Swans, Atlanta garage rockers The Black Lips, Twin Shadow, The Love Language, Lost in the Trees, Little Scream and Toto Y Moi. Check out the poster with the full lineup below.

Tickets for the festival are on sale now via the Hopscotch website. Ticket options include all show passes, passes to each night’s main stage performance and club show passes. For more information visit hopscotchmusicfest.com